Labels

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Day Eight: Best Original Screenplay, 1969

No preamble, folks. The nominees for Best Story and Screenplay Not Adapted from Material Previously Produced and/or Published are....

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Paul Mazursky & Larry Tucker

*****

first of four nominations in screenplay for Mazurksy; first and only nomination for Tucker; NSFC Awards winner for Best Screenplay, NYFCC Awards winner for Best Screenplay, WGA Awards winner for Best Original Comedy; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Screenplay

Astute observations on the middle-aged white liberal navigating counter-culture-become-culture, with friendships and marriages strengthened and strained by open-mindedness run amok, ending with a beautiful summation of the simple connection we're all looking for.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

William Goldman

****

first of two nominations and wins; BAFTA Award winner for Best Screenplay, WGA Awards winner for Best Original Drama; Golden Globe nominee for Best Screenplay

An elegy for changing times and the relics finding themselves at a loss for what to do - a farewell to the west, a hello to the 70s. Very quotable: "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!" "Don't you get sick of being right all the time?" "I thought you secretly wanted to know so I told you."

The Damned

Nicola Badalucco & Enrico Medioli & Luchino Visconti

****

first and only nominations; NYFCC Awards second runner-up for Best Screenplay

Packed like a damn novel, history brought to salacious life with sexual deviance, capitalist excess, and fascist overreach all tied together for one enthralling, soapy epic full of scandalous events and vividly sordid characters.

Easy Rider

Peter Fonda & Dennis Hopper & Terry Southern

*

first and only nomination in this category for Fonda & Hopper; second and final nomination for Southern; WGA Award nominee for Best Original Drama

Is it scripted? Is it improvised? I don't know, it's mostly boring blah-blah anyway.

The Wild Bunch

Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah

story by Walon Green and Roy N. Sickner

*****

first and only nomination in this category for Green; first and only nominations period for Peckinpah and Sickner

A darker, bloodier take on the end of the American West, with its outlaws, bounty hunters, and villainous warlords all possessed of varying degrees of bloodlust. One of the more cynical films of the year, and yet...one that believes in the possibility of a type of redemption. For someone.